Let’s Just Retire the Word “Zionist” for a Little While, OK?
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by JL Wall
I was catching up on long-forsaken contact with the rest of the blogosphere (like I said, Sammy Sosa gave me the flu) and while reading Jack Ross on Goldfarb vs. Sullivan, I realized something: the trouble with that word, “Zionist” (or any of its other forms)* — why you can find it used as a really obvious code-word for “all the Jews” or, innocuously, referring simply to a particular strand of political ideology – is that, anymore, it’s empty. How many people, after all, can agree precisely on the particular strand of political ideology it sometimes tries to refer to?
I mean: am I a Zionist? Depending on who you are, your opinion of the term’s meaning, your beliefs, your agenda, you could make a case for either side, I suppose. But I’ve never really cared whether or not I could be called one — knowing what I believe is good enough for me.
Orwell’s examples of a “meaningless word” of the political sort demonstrated formerly specific terms reduced to mere impressions: Fascism = “undesirable”; democratic = a term of praise; etc. The meaninglessness of “Zionism” is a different sort. It has not been reduced to “a sense of” something or other; it has been hollowed out quite entirely, just a ready-made pillowcase for whatever meaning the speaker and listener individually choose to stuff it with for the time being.
And so we are at the point where it is nothing more than a political football, convenient no matter whose side you’re on. From one perspective, it is a term of praise when you or your friends use it (though what it refers to will likely vary from situation to situation) but always a term of denigration from an enemy. From another, a convenient if failed attempt at euphemism to allow reference to that Jewish Conspiracy. And another: used to refer to some political ideology which you may agree or disagree with (or sympathize with or not), but even if good-faith attempts are made to pinpoint what, exactly, this ideology is, they will fail and the reference will continue to shift because the word itself no longer contains any meaning.
For why hollowed-out words are outright dangerous (as well as bad for coherent political discourse), I’d first recommend picking up some Orwell again. But if you don’t have time for either 1984 or “Politics and the English Language,” these old posts of mine may get at it well enough.
*Just so no one gets confused, Sullivan, so far as I can tell, didn’t use the word in the tiff at hand. It got dropped into the debate later, and I’m just picking it up and running with it, because I’m prone to do such things.
Filed under: media/culture, politics
“the trouble with that word […] is that, anymore, it’s empty”
Admirable use of ‘positive _anymore_’. In standard American English, the word _anymore_ is a so-called ‘negative polarity item’, which is linguistics-speak for an adverb that can only be used in negative statements, and in this case, also questions. But some non-standard dialects allow its use in positive statements as well, as yours obviously does. Well done!
By the way, the rest of your blog entry is a fine analysis of what we linguists call ’semantic bleaching’, where the meaning of a word expands to cover new contexts over time, until, as in this case, it ends up losing almost any specific meaning. Really the next step is for ‘Zionist’ to turn into a grammatical function word, like ‘if’ or ‘and’.
Actually, Zionist has a specific meaning. While it is true that the word is sometimes misused and often misunderstood, it is impossible to “retire” the term. There is no real synonym. Perhaps your real goal is to retire the discussion?
Below is from Merriam-Webster online:
zionist
2 entries found.
1. Zionism
2. anti-
Main Entry:
Zi·on·ism Listen to the pronunciation of Zionism
Pronunciation:
\ˈzī-ə-ˌni-zəm\
Function:
noun
Date:
1896
: an international movement originally for the establishment of a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine and later for the support of modern Israel
— Zi·on·ist Listen to the pronunciation of Zionist \-nist\ adjective or noun
— Zi·on·is·tic Listen to the pronunciation of Zionistic \ˌzī-ə-ˈnis-tik\ adjective
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/zionist
*
For information on what this means see http://www.ifamericansknew.org
J — the day “Zionist” becomes a grammatical function word will be terrifying just because of the inefficiency of it! 3 syllables for one of those things — think of the time we’d be losing.
Alison — the title, yes, is a rather outlandish suggestion, though not entirely unserious. (Note that it doesn’t advocate a _permanent_ retirement of the word. Just something Michael Jordan-esque.) But I’m tired of seeing things like Rev. Wright say (my paraphrase), “Whoops! Meant to say ‘Zionists.’ Wouldn’t make a lick of sense to have said that, I know, but I’ve just got no clue how ‘them Jews’ slipped out instead,” or, on the other hand, the Goldfarb “Sullivan-said-Neocon-by-which-he-meant-Zionists-by-which-he-meant-Jews!” canard. Or comparable situations minus my gratituous infusion of snark or the actors’ insistence upon self-parody.
And while the the word may have a specific dictionary meaning, it no longer has any specific meaning in discourse. (I’m going to refer again to my example above: there are almost certainly people who would call me a Zionist, but there are also almost certainly those who call themselves Zionists would say I’m anything but one.) Discourse, not a dictionary, is where words have more meaning in life — especially inherently political words, like this one. And words in discourse can become dangerous when they approach meaninglessness — especially in political discourse.
The first part of the definition above is describing “ethnic nationalism.”
The second part is about groups for various reasons supporting Israel. Some of those reasons are nefarious like those of Christian apocalyptic groups while others have good intentions like supporting democracy in the Middle East. Then people have different ideas of what support constitutes because they have different objectives, ranging from establishing peace, making a buck off selling weapons, or supporting territory expansion from a safe distance.